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Right then guys and gals, suggestions and advice needed. I'm currently running the Windows 7 RC on my Laptop. I've just had a message pop up reminding me to backup and upgrade it in the next 13 days. From March 1st my PC is going to start restarting every 2 hours as Microsoft start winding down the RC support.

Here's where I need the advice though. I'm out of the country until the end of March, and I'm using a fairly slow, fairly heavily capped internet connection that belongs to the family of the house I'm staying in. I can't buy a legit copy of Windows 7, and even if I could I don't plan on using this laptop enough once I'm back in the UK to warrant it. I can't download it because of the internet cap. I have no blank DVDs, and I'm not sure where to get any so getting a small Linux Live-DVD/CD isn't a great option, and again the internet cap probably won't allow it.

As far as I can tell, the best options I have are to either grin and bear the restarts, making sure I save all work every 2 hours, and don't get heavily into a game or a long film.

Or, I get a lightweight Linux flavour on a USB stick and run that for a month. Does anyone know if you can make a Live USB-Key Linux, that contains most of the install files, and is sub-200MB?

Do I have any other options? Oh, I bought the laptop with Vista installed, made the required backup DVDs, and then left them at home...

I think this is what you're looking for. A Linux distro called SLAX. Its about 200MB and has a USB version. Simply download the USB Version (TAR Archive so have 7-Zip/WinRAR handy to uncompress it) and unzip it onto your desktop. Inside the "slax-6.1.2" folder your will find the "boot" & "slax" folders. Copy both to your USB. Open the "boot" folder on your USB and run the "bootinst.bat" to make your USB bootable. Make sure your BIOS supports and is set to boot from a USB. Reboot and install SLAX.

Cheers for all the help guys. I went with Slax, but I haven't been able to get WPA support running yet, so it's a work in progress. I had a look at the other two distros suggested, from what I can tell you need a Live CD to run Puppy before installing it to a USB stick, and DSL looks to have the same problems with WPA as Slax (and as I'd already downloaded Slax by then...)

Also, just to clarify, I'm not running a pirated copy of Windows 7, I'm running the Release Candidate that was released before the final version. Microsoft are removing support for it from March 1st, so I don't think there's anything I can do locally to solve the problem, I'd guess it's all server side.

just take a 30 day trail of 7 rtm, then reinstall repeat that until you buy a licence

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Only problem is I'm living abroad and using someone elses internet connection. And it's really slow and pretty heavily capped. If I did the RTM trick I'd need to backup my drive every 30 days, and I don't have anything to back it up to (Except the 1GB USB drive I'm using for Linux!)